Tag Archives: Human Rights

Venezuela prosecutors to question ex-National Guard chief on human rights

FILE PHOTO: A member of the national guard looks on atop a vehicle during clashes with opposition supporters while rallying against Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela, April 20, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela’s state prosecutors’ office said on Thursday that it is calling in the former head of the National Guard for questioning about “serious and systematic” human rights violations during the recent wave of anti-government protests.

For three months, critics of President Nicolas Maduro have taken to the streets almost every day to protest against what they call the creation of a dictatorship. The protests, which have left nearly 80 dead, frequently culminate in violent clashes with security forces.

Maduro says they are an attempt to overthrow him with the support of Washington.

General Antonio Benavides, who was taken off the job last week after troops under his command were filmed firing handguns at protesters, is to appear before prosecutors on July 6.

“There has been evidence of excessive use of force in the repression of demonstrations, the use of unauthorized firearms … cruel treatment and torture of persons apprehended, as well as raids without warrant and damages to property,” the office said in a statement.

The Government of the Capital District, where Benavides now works, did not answer phone calls seeking comment.

Chief Prosecutor Luisa Ortega, who broke with Maduro this year, has condemned the excessive use of force by the National Guard as well as the increasing use of military tribunals to try those arrested in protests.

Government officials and leaders of the ruling Socialist Party have described her as a “traitor,” and the Supreme Court has received a request to have her removed from her post for “serious offenses.”

(Reporting by Diego Oré; editing by Silene Ramírez and Jonathan Oatis)

Rouhani faces pressure to improve human rights in Iran

FILE PHOTO: Iranian president assan Rouhani attends a news conference in Tehran, Iran, May 22, 2017. TIMA via REUTERS

By Babak Dehghanpisheh

BEIRUT (Reuters) – In the week before the May 19 presidential election in Iran, the eventual victor, Hassan Rouhani, criticised the judiciary and the powerful Revolutionary Guards with rhetoric rarely heard in public in the Islamic republic.

Now, in the eyes of his supporters, it is time to deliver. Millions of Rouhani’s followers expect him to keep pushing on human rights issues.

“The majority of Iranians have made it clear that they want improvement on human rights,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), a New York-based advocacy group. “Expectations are running high.”

That message came through loud and clear shortly before Rouhani, who won re-election with more than 57 percent of the vote, took the stage at a gathering of supporters in Tehran last week.

“Ya Hussein, Mirhossein” went the thunderous chant, a reference to Mirhossein Mousavi, a presidential candidate in the 2009 election, who, along with fellow candidate Mehdi Karroubi disputed the results, spurring widespread protests.

Dozens of protestors were killed and hundreds arrested in the crackdown that followed, according to human rights groups.

Mousavi, his wife Zahra, and Karroubi, were placed under house arrest in 2011 after calling for protests in Iran in solidarity with pro-democracy uprisings across the Middle East.

The trio’s continued detention is a divisive political issue in Iran and one that Rouhani has promised to resolve.

But if he keeps pushing, he will face a backlash from his hardline opponents which could undermine his second term, analysts say.

CLEAR MESSAGE

At the rally, it took several minutes for the announcer to quiet the crowd before another chant broke out: “Our message is clear, house arrest must be broken”.

Along with those arrests, more than 20 journalists and activists were arrested in the lead-up to the elections according to CHRI, an issue which has also been raised by Rouhani supporters.

Many political prisoners are kept in solitary confinement and not allowed to see their families for long periods of time, according to human rights groups.

Iran has one of world’s highest rates of capital punishment. At least 530 people were executed in 2016, according to a United Nations report.

Rouhani’s supporters also expect him to fight for basic rights that affect their daily lives, like preventing security forces from harassing women for the way they dress or the judiciary from cancelling concerts.

During his first term, Rouhani made the signing of an agreement with Western powers, which lifted a large number of sanctions in exchange for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program, his top priority.

As a result, human rights issues were sidelined, analysts say. But now that the nuclear agreement is being implemented, his supporters are waiting for change.

Rouhani’s decisive election win may have finally given him the opportunity to address human rights issues.

“As the head of the executive branch, Mr. Rouhani and his colleagues must use this opportunity to the maximum,” parliamentarian Gholamreza Tajgardoon said last week, according to the Iranian Labour News Agency (ILNA).

But signs are emerging that hardliners are ready for a fight.

Iran’s judiciary chief hit back at Rouhani on Monday for bringing up the issue of the house arrest of opposition leaders during his campaign.

“Who are you to break the house arrests?” Larijani said without naming Rouhani, according to the judiciary news site Mizan.

Larijani said the Supreme National Security Council must take the initial decision to end the house arrests and then the judiciary would step in.

Any attempt to resolve this issue outside this legal procedure would be seen as an attempt to stoke up unrest similar to 2009, he said, according to Mizan.

“We’re issuing a warning that they should wrap this issue up otherwise the judiciary, with authority, will wrap this issue up itself,” Larijani said.

Meanwhile, the restrictions continue.

Karroubi, 79, served as speaker of parliament before running for president in 2005 and 2009. He now stays largely on the upper floor of his house in Tehran and gets exercise by walking indoors, according to his son Mohammad Taghi. His only sources of information are local newspapers and state TV.

Security agents stay on the premises around the clock and do not allow him to have access to the phone or Internet.

Taghi, speaking by telephone, said the hosue arrest had

backfired, raising the profile and importance of his father and the other detainees.

“If the goal is to cut off their political ties, what we’ve seen is that the passage of these six or seven years hasn’t had any effect,” he said. “In fact, the limitations and problems have increased their impact in society.”

Little progress can be made on any human rights issue without the approval of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the highest power in the country.

“Since becoming Supreme Leader in 1989, Khamenei has sought to weaken every Iranian president in their second term,” said Karim Sadjadpour, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment.

“Given how directly Rouhani challenged Khamenei during the campaign this tradition is likely to continue.”

(Reporting By Babak Dehghanpisheh; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

EU raises human rights in talks with Turkey’s Erdogan

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) shakes hands with European Council President Donald Tusk (R) in Brussels, Belgium, May 25, 2017. REUTERS/Oliver Hoslet/Pool

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Senior European Union officials on Thursday pressed President Tayyip Erdogan over Turkey’s human rights record while he pushed Brussels to deliver on promises of visa-free travel to Europe for Turks.

Erdogan’s visit to Brussels, where he was also due to attend a NATO summit, comes at a time of strain in EU-Turkey relations.

The EU has expressed concern over Turkey’s sacking and jailing of tens of thousands of soldiers, police, teachers and civil servants since a failed military coup last July. It has also criticized a revamping of Turkey’s constitution – backed by a referendum – that greatly expands Erdogan’s powers.

Turkey says its crackdown is targeting supporters of a exiled Muslim cleric it blames for the coup attempt. It has also accused the EU of frustrating Ankara’s decades-old bid to join the bloc. Talks are now effectively frozen and Erdogan has suggested Turkey might walk away from the EU.

“We discussed the need to cooperate. I put the question of human rights in the center of our discussions with Erdogan,” European Council chief Donald Tusk wrote in a tweet following the meeting but gave no further details.

Erdogan posed for photos with Tusk and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker but the atmosphere was frosty and they exchanged no words in public, in contrast to the impromptu conversation the EU officials struck up with U.S. President Donald Trump earlier in the day.

Juncker, Tusk and Erdogan met together for 40 minutes, followed by a 30-minute meeting between Juncker and Erdogan, a spokeswoman for the Commission said.

“The EU and Turkey must and will continue to cooperate. Major issues of common interest were discussed in detail in a good and constructive atmosphere,” she said.

MIGRANT DEAL

EU officials said the three men discussed the functioning of a 2016 accord whereby Ankara prevents migrants traveling from its territory to Europe in return for funds to aid refugees stuck in Turkey and visa-free travel to the bloc for Turks.

Ankara has previously threatened to walk away from the deal, citing frustration over what it says is Europe’s failure to deliver on its side of the bargain. The EU says Turkey must first amend its security laws.

But EU officials said the agreement did not appear to be in jeopardy after the talks between Erdogan, Tusk and Juncker, their first for nine months. “It is working so far,” one EU official said. “We didn’t see any sign of it changing.”

Turkish presidential sources said Erdogan, Tusk and Juncker had emphasized the need to implement the deal on migrants in their talks.

Erdogan also met new French President Emmanuel Macron in Brussels and they agreed on boosting annual bilateral trade to 20 billion euros ($22 billion) and improving Ankara’s diplomatic ties with the EU, the Turkish sources said.

Macron raised the issue of a French photographer detained by Turkish police while on an assignment in the mainly Kurdish southeast and who has begun a hunger strike in protest, a French official said.

Erdogan told Macron he would quickly look into the situation. Macron and Erdogan also agreed to strengthen consultations on the situation in Syria, the official said.

(Reporting By Philip Blenkinsop, Alastair Macdonald and Michel Rose; additional reporting by Ece Toksabay and Tuvan Gumrukcu; Writing by David Dolan,; Editing by Robert-Jan Bartunek and Gareth Jones)

Rights group accuses Syria of several likely nerve agent attacks

A civil defence member breathes through an oxygen mask, after what rescue workers described as a suspected gas attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib, Syria April 4, 2017. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Human Rights Watch on Monday accused Syrian government forces of likely dropping bombs containing nerve agents at least three times elsewhere in the country before an April 4 attack that killed dozens of people and sparked a retaliatory U.S. strike.

The Syrian government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons. The Syrian U.N. mission was not immediately available to comment on the allegations by Human Rights Watch, which cited interviews with witnesses and medical personnel.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical weapons, a global watchdog, has said sarin or a similar banned toxin was used in the April 4 strike.

Human Rights Watch said that before the April 4 attack on Khan Sheikhoun, government warplanes also appeared to have dropped nerve agents on eastern Hama on Dec. 11 and 12, 2016, and northern Hama, near Khan Sheikhoun, on March 30, 2017.

“All four of these attacks were in areas where opposition or ISIS forces were launching an offensive that threatened government military air bases,” Human Rights Watch Executive Director Ken Roth told a news conference at the United Nations.

“The decision to ratchet up to this level seems to have been related to that unfavorable battlefield situation,” he said.

The report said an opposition-affiliated activist and local residents provided the names of 64 people they say died from exposure to chemicals in the December attacks, which were in an area controlled by Islamic State militants.

It said no one died in the March 30 attack but dozens of people were injured, according to residents and medical workers.

“The pattern shows that the Syrian government retained sarin or some similar nerve agent after its August 2013 eastern Ghouta attack despite having agreed to hand over all chemical weapons to U.N. inspectors,” Roth said.

Syria agreed to destroy its chemical weapons in 2013 under a deal brokered by Moscow and Washington.

Roth said Human Rights Watch found that the remnants of a bomb at the site of the April 4 attack “appear consistent with the characteristics with a Soviet-made air-dropped chemical bomb specifically designed to deliver sarin.” The report said the remnants of the bomb appears similar to a KhAB-250.

Human Rights Watch called on the U.N. Security Council to impose an arms embargo and targeted sanctions on Syria and refer the situation in the country to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Russia and China blocked a Western bid for a referral to the ICC in 2014 and this February blocked a bid to impose sanctions over accusations of chemical weapons attacks.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Dozens killed in suspected gas attack on Syrian rebel area

A Syrian man from Idlib is carried by Turkish medics wearing chemical protective suits to a hospital in the border town of Reyhanli in Hatay province, Turkey, April 4, 2017. Ferhat Dervisoglu/Dogan News Agency via REUTERS

By Ellen Francis

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A suspected Syrian government chemical attack killed at least 58 people, including 11 children, in the northwestern province of Idlib on Tuesday, a monitor, medics and rescue workers in the rebel-held area said.

A Syrian military source strongly denied the army had used any such weapons.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack, believed to have been carried out by Syrian army jets, caused many people to choke, and some had foam coming out of their mouths. All the children were under the age of eight.

“This morning, at 6:30 a.m., warplanes targeted Khan Sheikhoun with gases, believed to be sarin and chlorine,” said Mounzer Khalil, head of Idlib’s health authority. The attack had killed more than 50 people and wounded 300, he said.

“Most of the hospitals in Idlib province are now overflowing with wounded people,” Khalil told a news conference in Idlib.

The air strikes that hit the town of Khan Sheikhoun, in the south of rebel-held Idlib, killed at least 58 people, said the Observatory, a British-based war monitoring group.

Warplanes later struck near a medical point where victims of the attack were receiving treatment, the Observatory and civil defense workers said.

The civil defense, also known as the White Helmets – a rescue service that operates in opposition areas of Syria – said jets struck one of its centers in the area and the nearby medical point.

It would mark the deadliest chemical attack in Syria since sarin gas killed hundreds of civilians in Ghouta near the capital in August 2013. Western states said the Syrian government was responsible for the 2013 attack. Damascus blamed rebels.

MILITARY DENIES

The Syrian military source on Tuesday denied allegations that government forces had used chemical weapons.

The army “has not and does not use them, not in the past and not in the future, because it does not have them in the first place”, the source said.

A series of investigations by the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) found that various parties in the Syrian war have used chlorine, sulfur mustard gas and sarin.

A joint U.N.-OPCW report published last October said government forces used chlorine in a toxic gas attack in Qmenas in Idlib province in March 2015. An earlier report by the same team blamed Syrian government troops for chlorine attacks in Talmenes in March 2014 and Sarmin in March 2015. It also said Islamic State had used sulfur mustard gas.

The OPCW had no immediate comment on Tuesday.

France called for an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting about Tuesday’s suspected attack. Turkey, which backs the anti-Assad opposition, said the attack could derail Russian-backed diplomatic efforts to shore up a ceasefire.

“A new and particularly serious chemical attack took place this morning in Idlib province. The first information suggests a large number of victims, including children. I condemn this disgusting act,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said.

Reuters photographs showed people breathing through oxygen masks and wearing protection suits, while others carried the bodies of dead children, and corpses wrapped in blankets were lined up on the ground.

Activists in northern Syria circulated pictures on social media showing a purported victim with foam around his mouth, and rescue workers hosing down almost naked children squirming on the floor.

Most of the town’s streets had become empty, a witness said.

CEASEFIRE

Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said 15 people, mostly women and children, had been brought into Turkey.

An official at the Turkish Health Ministry had said earlier that Turkey’s disaster management agency was first “scanning those arriving for chemical weapons, then decontaminating them from chemicals” before they could be taken to hospitals.

The conflict pits President Bashar al-Assad’s government, helped by Russia and Iranian-backed militias, against a wide array of rebel groups, including some that have been supported by Turkey, the United States and Gulf monarchies.

The Russian Defence Ministry said on Tuesday that Russian planes had not carried out air strikes on Khan Sheikhoun.

Syrian and Russian air strikes have battered parts of Idlib, according to the Observatory, despite a ceasefire that Turkey and Russia brokered in December.

Jets also struck the town of Salqin in the north of Idlib province on Tuesday, killing eight people, the monitor said.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the suspected attack, Turkish presidential sources said. They said the two leaders had also emphasized the importance of maintaining the ceasefire. Turkey’s foreign minister called the attack a crime against humanity.

The European Union’s top diplomat Federica Mogherini said: “Obviously there is a primary responsibility from the regime because it has the primary responsibility of protecting its people.”

TOXIC ARSENAL

Idlib province contains the largest populated area controlled by anti-Assad rebels – both nationalist Free Syrian Army groups and Islamist factions including the former al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.

Idlib’s population has ballooned, with thousands of fighters and civilians shuttled out of Aleppo city and areas around Damascus that the government has retaken in recent months.

U.S. air strikes since January have also hit several areas in the rural province where jihadists have a powerful presence.

Following the 2013 attack, Syria joined the international Chemical Weapons Convention under a U.S.-Russian deal, averting the threat of U.S.-led military intervention.

Under the deal, Syria agreed to give up its toxic arsenal and surrendered 1,300 tonnes of toxic weapons and industrial chemicals to the international community for destruction.

U.N.-OPCW investigators found, however, that it continued to use chlorine, which is widely available and difficult to trace, in so-called barrel bombs, dropped from helicopters.

Although chlorine is not a banned substance, the use of any chemical is banned under 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, to which Syria is a member.

Damascus has repeatedly denied using such weapons during the six-year war, which has killed hundreds of thousands and created the world’s worst refugee crisis.

(Additional reporting by Laila Bassam in Beirut, Anthony Deutsch in Amsterdam, Ercan Gurses and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Daren Butler in Istanbul, Robin Emmott in Brussels, John Irish in Paris; Editing by Tom Perry and Alison Williams)

U.N. broadens inquiry into North Korea ‘crimes against humanity’

Mun Jong Chol, counselor at the North Korea mission to the U.N. in Geneva, talks with journalists aside of a meeting of the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland March 24, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The top United Nations human rights body agreed on Friday to widen its investigation into widespread violations in North Korea with a view to documenting alleged crimes against humanity for future prosecution.

North Korea said it “categorically and totally rejects” the resolution adopted by the U.N. Human Rights Council. The text had been framed by the United States and “other hostile forces” for political reasons “to strangle the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea),” its envoy said after boycotting the debate.

The 47-member state Geneva forum adopted a resolution, brought by Japan and the European Union and backed by the United States, on the final day of its four-week session without a vote.

The U.N. human rights office in Seoul will be strengthened for two years with international criminal justice experts to establish a central repository for testimony and evidence “with a view to developing possible strategies to be used in any future accountability process”, the text said.

The Seoul office deploys six staff who conduct in-depth interviews with dozens of North Korean defectors each week, recording their testimony, a U.N. official based there told Reuters. Some 1,400 North Koreans arrive each year in South Korea, most via China, he said.

DEFECTORS’ TESTIMONY

“This not only brings North Koreans one step closer to justice for human rights crimes they have suffered, but should also make North Korean government officials think twice before inflicting more abuse,” John Fisher of the group Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

A U.N. commission of inquiry, in a landmark 2014 report based on interviews and public hearings with defectors, cataloged massive violations in North Korea – including large prison camps, starvation and executions – that it said should be brought to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“The ‘resolution’ is nothing more than a document for interference in internal affairs of sovereign states and represents the culmination of politicization, selectivity and double standards of human rights,” Mun Jong Chol, a counselor at North Korea’s mission to the U.N. in Geneva, told reporters.

It was a fraudulent document full of “lies, fabrications and plots”, Mun said.

China said it “dissociated” itself from the council’s decision and called for dialogue.

The situation on the divided Korean peninsula is “complex and sensitive” and all sides should avoid provocation by an act or words that might lead to an escalation”, China’s delegation said.

“China hopes we can focus on the bigger picture,” it said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Ralph Boulton)

North Korea boycotts ‘politically motivated’ U.N. rights session

Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in North Korea Tomas Ojea Quintana addresses a news conference after his report to the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland,

Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in North Korea Tomas Ojea Quintana addresses a news conference after his report to the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 13, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – North Korea boycotted a U.N. review of its human rights record on Monday, shunning calls to hold to account the Pyongyang leadership for crimes against humanity documented by the world body.

A 2014 U.N. report detailed the use of political prison camps, starvation and executions, saying security chiefs and possibly even Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un himself should face international justice.

The U.N. Human Rights Council held a two-hour session on abuses in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) amid rising tensions on the divided peninsula following its latest missile tests last week and two nuclear tests last year.

“We are not participating in any meeting on DPRK’s human rights situation because it is politically motivated,” Choe Myong Nam, Pyongyang’s deputy ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, told Reuters.

U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the DPRK Tomas Ojea Quintana said he regretted the decision but was still seeking engagement with North Korea.

Rising political and military tensions should not shield ongoing violations from international scrutiny, he said.

“Military tensions have brought human rights dialogue with the DPRK to a standstill,” Ojea Quintana told the 47-member forum.

He also called for an independent investigation into the killing of Kim Jong Nam, estranged half-brother of Kim Jong-un, in Malaysia last month, saying there may be a need to “protect other persons from targeted killings”.

Between 80,000 and 120,000 people are held in four known political prison camps in North Korea and hundreds of families in South Korea and Japan are looking for missing relatives believed abducted by North Korean agents, Ojea Quintana said.

“We remain deeply concerned by ongoing widespread and gross human rights violations and abuses in the DPRK, including summary executions, enslavement, torture, arbitrary detention, and enforced disappearances,” said William Mozdzierz,

head of the U.S. delegation.

He added that the U.S. is open to improved relations if the DPRK was willing to meet its international obligations.

South Korea’s envoy Lim Jung-taek voiced dismay that three years after the landmark U.N. report there was “no glimpse of hope” for ending “systematic, widespread and gross violations”.

Ying Wang of China, North Korea’s main ally, said Beijing was “against the politicization of human rights issues” while seeking dialogue and de-escalation on the peninsula.

Sara Hossain, a member of the Council’s group of independent experts on accountability, said the U.N. should consider ways of prosecuting those responsible for human rights abuses in North Korea, possibly by creating an international tribunal.

“The groundwork for future criminal trials should be laid now,” she said.

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy and Julia Glover)

U.N. urged to prepare North Korea case for alleged crimes against humanity

The North Korea flag flutters next to concertina wire at the North Korean embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia March 9, 2017. REUTERS/Edgar Su

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – A veteran investigator urged the United Nations on Thursday to appoint an international legal expert to prepare judicial proceedings against North Korea’s leadership for documented crimes against humanity.

His call came amid an international furor over the murder of Kim Jong Nam, the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and critic of his rule, in Malaysia last month.

A U.N. commission of inquiry, in a 2014 report issued after it conducted interviews and public hearings with defectors, cataloged massive violations in North Korea – including large prison camps, starvation and executions – that it said should be brought to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Marzuki Darusman, a former Indonesian attorney-general who served on the U.N. commission of inquiry on North Korea, said the U.N. Human Rights Council must pursue North Korean accountability during its current session.

“There is a need for the Human Rights Council to appoint an independent special expert to oversee the judicial prosecutorial process which will lead up to an eventual mechanism of accountability,” Marzuki told a panel held on the sidelines of the Geneva forum.

The landmark 2014 report, rejected by Pyongyang, said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un might be personally responsible for crimes against humanity.

Evidence recorded over the past decade or more by U.N. investigators should be given to a new U.N. mechanism for prosecution, he said, adding: “Let us prevail in the end-game.”

Experts hope an ad hoc tribunal on North Korea may be set up someday, as China would be expected to veto any move in the U.N. Security Council to refer its ally to the ICC.

The “assassination” of Kim Jong Nam ought to be a “wake-up call”, Lee Jung-Hoon, South Korean ambassador for North Korean human rights, told the event.

“That is why I think this assassination is such a game-changer because a general audience is seeing for the first time live what kind of regime we are really dealing with,” Lee said.

“If North Korea is able to do this to the older brother of Kim, to the uncle of Kim (Jang Song Thaek executed in 2013), and all the elite purging left and right, can you imagine what life might be like if you are a prisoner in a North Korean prison camp, with over 100,000 of them?” he said.

Australian Justice Michael Kirby, who chaired the 2014 inquiry, said witness statements would be used once a tribunal and prosecutor were appointed. “Accountability is the name of the game in human rights, otherwise it’s all rhetoric.”

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Mark Heinrich)

China rails against U.S. for human rights violations

FILE PHOTO: A U.S. flag is tweaked ahead of a news conference between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2016. REUTERS/Jacquelyn Martin/Pool

BEIJING (Reuters) – China lashed out at the United States for its “terrible human rights problems” in a report on Thursday, adding to recent international criticism of Washington on issues ranging from violence inflicted on minorities to U.S. immigration policies.

The U.S. State Department’s annual report on rights in nearly 200 countries last week accused China of torture, executions without due process, repression of political rights and persecution of ethnic minorities, among other issues.

In an annual Chinese response to the U.S. report, China’s State Council, or cabinet, said the United States suffered from rampant gun violence and high levels of incarceration.

U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria had caused thousands of civilian deaths, according to the report, which was carried by the state-run Xinhua news agency.

“With the gunshots lingering in people’s ears behind the Statue of Liberty, worsening racial discrimination and the election farce dominated by money politics, the self-proclaimed human rights defender has exposed its human rights ‘myth’ with its own deeds,” the State Council said.

“The United States repeatedly trampled on human rights in other countries and wilfully slaughtered innocent victims,” it said, referring to deaths in U.S. drone strikes.

On Wednesday, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, said U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments about migrants, Mexicans and Muslims were “harmful and fuel xenophobic abuses” and that his immigration policies could lead to breaches of international law.

Trump’s derogatory campaign rhetoric against Muslims and Mexican immigrants won enthusiastic backing from prominent white supremacists who embrace anti-Jewish, anti-black and anti-Muslim ideologies, though the president has disavowed their support.

Human rights have long been a source of tension between the world’s two largest economies, especially since 1989, when the United States imposed sanctions on China after a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

China rejects criticism of its rights record and has pointed to its success at lifting millions out of poverty.

But the ruling Communist Party brooks no political dissent and President Xi Jinping’s administration has seen a sweeping crackdown on rights lawyers and activists.

(Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

Israel bans Human Right Watch worker, accuses group of peddling pro-Palestinian line

FILE PHOTO: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during an event marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, marked on January 27, at the Yad Vashem synagogue in Jerusalem January 26, 2017. REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo

By Ori Lewis

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel has denied a work permit to a Human Rights Watch researcher, accusing the group of serving as Palestinian propagandists in a move the U.S.-based organisation called an “ominous turn”.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said the decision had been taken because of HRW’s “extreme, hostile anti-Israel agenda which was working at the service of Palestinian propaganda…in a totally biased manner.”

The news emerged as Israel faced criticism from the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva over the 18-month jail sentence handed to an Israeli soldier who shot an incapacitated Palestinian assailant in the head. The council called it an “apparent extrajudicial execution of an unarmed man”.

U.N. human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said the sentence given to soldier Elor Azaria was “excessively lenient” and part of a “chronic culture of impunity” for Israeli abuse of Palestinians.

Many Israelis, particularly from the right-wing, opposed the prosecution of Azaria for killing Abdel Fattah al-Sharif Elor, who had attacked one of his comrades with a knife.

HRW said it was “disappointing that the Israeli government seems unable or unwilling to distinguish between justified criticisms of its actions and hostile political propaganda”.

The organisation had been granted unimpeded access to Israel and the West Bank for three decades. Israel had now joined Cuba, Egypt, North Korea, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela as countries that have impeded its access, HRW said.

In its letter, the Israeli immigration office said the Foreign Ministry had advised it that HRW’s work amounted to “Palestinian propaganda under the false banner of human rights”.

“Because of this, we recommend denying the permit,” it said.

The U.S. State Department said it strongly disagreed with Israel’s characterisation of HRW, which it considers a credible human rights organisation.

“Even though we do not agree with all of their assertions or conclusions, given the seriousness of their efforts, we support the importance of the work they do. We reference HRW reports in our own reporting,” acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

Israeli spokesman Nahshon said the decision was a one-off and did not represent a change in policy towards NGOs. The HRW representative could enter Israel on a tourist visa and the work visa application may be reconsidered if an appeal is lodged.

Last year, a new law limited foreign funding for NGOs which Israel considers critical of its policies. The law was heavily criticised by the European Union.

Many of the Israeli NGOs that receive support from foreign governments oppose the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government towards the Palestinians.

Israel has come under renewed international criticism for its expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, seen as an obstacle to resolving the Israeli-Palestiniam conflict.

The prospects of peace talks, already at a stalemate, were thrown into additional uncertainty this month when new U.S. President Donald Trump appeared to abandoned a long-standing commitment to a two-state solution.

Israel also dismissed the U.N. council’s criticism of the Palestinian’s killing.

“The (council) has proven once more that according to it’s twisted scale, one bullet fired by Azaria at a terrorist is more severe than the millions of bullets that murder innocent people in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Yemen. This is a council of hatred of Israel, not a human rights council,” Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on social media.

Israel says the council is biased against it due to its frequent resolutions condemning Israeli settlements and practices in the Gaza Strip.

At least 235 Palestinians have been killed in violence in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza since October 2015. Israel says that at least 158 of those killed were assailants and others died during clashes and protests. Two American tourists and 37 Israelis have also been killed.

(Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton in Washington and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)